ARM, Samsung, IBM, Freescale, TI and more join to form Linaro, speed rollout of Linux-based devices

My, my — what have we here? No, seriously, what is this hodgepodge of (rival) companies, and why have they suddenly decided to high five each other here at Computex? Frankly, we’re still trying to piece it all together, but after sitting through a Linaro launch event in Taipei, we’re beginning to get a better handle on the relationship that Samsung, ARM, IBM, Freescale, ST-Ericsson, Texas Instruments and the Linux Foundation have just made official. The outfits mentioned above are coming together to form the UK-based Linaro (a not-for-profit entity), which currently has 25 engineers but will see that figure shoot up to nearly a hundred around the world in the coming days. In short, the new firm — which will have an annual budget in the “tens of millions of dollars” but below “$100 million” — is seeking to “speed the rollout of Linux-based devices,” with one of the key points being this: Linaro will “provide a stable and optimized base for distributions and developers by creating new releases of optimized tools, kernel and middleware software validated for a wide range of SoCs, every six months.”

The whole effort seems to be aimed at getting Linux software builds and new smartphones together, faster, via middleware. There’s no doubt that phones are aging faster now than ever before, and helping the two ends of the spectrum meet more quickly is obviously in the best interest of those parties involved here. But based on statements made by the Linux Foundation’s representative here at the press briefing, Linaro will soon reach much further than the mobile space. He predicted that cars, refrigerators, cameras, camcorders and pretty much everything else (yes, including your future children) will “be connected,” and when you think about having that sort of scale, there’s a more obvious need to get a handle on device-software validation in order to speed efficiencies in development (not to mention better performance of various Linux software on a wide range of hardware).

Along the way, we learned that Linaro is “not meant to compete with Android and MeeGo, but to foster distribution,” and the builds that are released each six months will be validated by each partner firm before being shot out into the wild. Speaking of which, the first major release is planned for this November, with “performance optimizations for SoCs based on the ARM Cortex-Ax family.” We also got the feeling that this group was being formed in order to ensure a smooth transition from Linux dominating in the enterprise (air traffic control systems, stock markets, etc.) to an attempt to dominate in the consumer market. As TI’s delegate stated at the event, one of the overriding goals here is to reduce the amount of investment needed by each company in order to make their individual hardware products play nice with various Linux builds — pooling resources to create a nice slice of middleware obviously benefits each of these rival firms when it comes time to put rubber to road. It’s hard to say what exactly the impact here will be on the consumer in the short term, but anything that delivers more Linux devices to more people definitely gets our hands in the air (like we just don’t care).